Getting To Know Garden Speak

The language spoken in gardening circles can be quirky. For example, dirt isn’t just dirt, it’s soil. Dirt is what you make mud pies with; it’s the stain on your shirt. Soil, on the other hand, is full of promise and good nutrients. And some gardenholics tend to go on and on about plant names. You may catch them at the nursery asking, “Which Latin name is most correct, the old one or the new one?” or “What is the proper pronunciation for that plant?” Real garden snobs even get into heated debates about how to spell a particular plant name. Don’t be too hard on these people; they can’t help themselves. Besides, you may find yourself behaving the same way someday.

Knowing something about plant names helps you appreciate gardening more — and helps you get through this book.

The Fancy Names

The proper (scientific) botanical name of a plant consists of two parts, much in the same way that people have a first and a last name. However, in plant language, the last name comes first.

The most important name is the genus — the “Smith” of Joe Smith, if you will. (The genus name always begins with a capital letter when used as part of a multipart name.) A genus is a group of closely related plants. Just as in your own family, some of the plant cousins look very much alike, while others don’t bear much resemblance at all. Also like your family, some closely related individuals have very different comfort levels. One uncle lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and loves the heat, but his sister thinks that Oxford, England, is quite warm enough. Plants are the same way.

The second name, the “Joe” part of Joe Smith, is the species name. The species name usually describes some feature of the plant or its preferred habitat, or serves as a tribute to whoever discovered the plant. But the species name is disguised in pseudo-Latin, of course, just to keep things interesting. Consider, for example, Hosta undulata. Hosta is the genus name. The species name, undulata, describes the undulating shape of the leaf.

The plain, old-fashioned, natural species of some plants acquire new status in the face of prodigiously hybridized plants — tulips, for example. In those cases, the norm for the plant is some kind of hybrid of indeterminate botanical origin. That’s why when gardeners finally have in their gardens an actual natural, nonhybridized type of tulip, they say something like, “And this is my species tulip.” Gardeners are funny, aren’t they? (Note: In this guide, we use the abbreviation sp. for species and spp. for its plural.  ....read more